


Winter's Widow

by Polkadot4946



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, M/M, Never Have I Ever, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Red Room (Marvel), memory lapses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 09:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polkadot4946/pseuds/Polkadot4946
Summary: The Winter Soldier and Black Widow met while she worked for the Red Room. After moving into the compound Bucky suddenly remembers the intimacy of their encounters.





	Winter's Widow

**Author's Note:**

> Underage and forced sexual relationships are mentioned but not described. Please take care of yourself!
> 
> All italicized font is spoken in Russian between characters. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!

Bucky had never felt comfortable in group sessions. Since moving into the compound, he had avoided as many group meals as he could. He kept an odd sleeping schedule and ate every meal just early enough to miss most people.

He wished it wasn't personal or that it was a problem with crowds. Unfortunately, he felt like he had a problem with all the avengers. Everyone seemed familiar but never in a good way. Tony looked way too much like his dad for either of their comfort. Doctor Banner had been shown as a potential threat to be on the lookout for. He had been on Bucky’s hitlist for a few years, but it was better that the Doctor didn’t know that. Clint wasn’t familiar per say, but all the anti-SHIELD propaganda had been imbedded a little to deep into his head for him to trust the man entirely. 

Bucky assumed the same propaganda made him uncomfortable around Natasha. Every time he looked at her, she gave him a look that suggested they knew each other. Maybe they had. Steve had said that the Winter Soldier put a bullet through her side after she started working for SHIELD so that must have been the problem.

He was living under this assumption when he finished his workout early one morning. He’d woken up from his first nap and needed to eat lunch before the rest of the compound started making their way to the kitchen for Sam’s sandwiches. 

Natasha was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee in hand. Bucky barely glanced at her as he made his way to the fridge to make his own sandwich. She avoided the group meals as well so occasionally their avoidance lined up and they ate together. They normally sat in silence while she glanced at him occasionally. He never glanced back, she was too oddly familiar, and he didn’t want to deal with asking why.

Today he looked up at her as he moved to bring the bread to the island to start making the sandwich. The bread fell to the floor.

She was showing more skin than normal, and he recognized every inch of it. He knew the feel of her lips, the curve of her legs, and the shape of her cleavage. He’d seen her eyes before, but he didn’t recognize them this calm. He was used to their torture. He’d felt her against him. He'd felt every part of her, every inch and he knew she’d known him the same. They'd either had a lot of sex or one wild encounter.

He'd been tortured for being with her. Not every time. Sometimes they liked it. It must have been a lot of sex because he knew he’d been tortured for it more than once. He was only tortured if he enjoyed it. Only if he moaned with her. She always seemed to know what she was doing. Always in control but let him pretend he was sometimes. Always made him want her more than his gay heart ever thought possible. It was the instinct, the animalistic part of him that needed to do something of his own volition. She made it his choice and of course he fell for it. He didn't have anything else to choose so he couldn't be picky and wait for a man.

"Bucky?" 

He turned to face Steve who was standing near Natasha. They were on the other side of the island, but he looked like he wanted to move closer.

"You with me Bucky?" Steve asked again.

Bucky saw Natasha and forced himself to look away before she took over his brain again as she had so many goddamn times. She had opened a floodwall.

"I'm trying to be," Bucky whispered. He then felt his accent switch as he spoke in Russian  _ "You were in Southern Ukraine, weren't you?" _

He didn't dare look at Natasha but heard her let out a small laugh. _ "All it took for you to recognize me was some skimpy clothing?" _

He met her eyes. The difference between what they used to be was amazing. She'd taken control. Real control. She'd gained confidence because her eyes didn't scream anymore. 

_ "You can't really be surprised by that can you?"  _ He gave her a coy smirk. He didn't have any of the confidence to pull it off, but he didn't then either, so it didn't matter.

_ "No, you always played dirty Winter, that's why they liked me with you." _

"Natasha?" Steve looked very worried, "Should we be concerned?"

"He's in control, were fine, just lost in flashbacks, he forgot I could speak Russian." 

If Steve reacted to this Bucky didn't see it. He was too busy watching Natasha. He saw her put up a front for the lie and take it back down to make eye contact again.

"That true Buck?" Steve asked. "You okay?"

Bucky forced himself to nod for Steve's sake.  _ "They only let you have me because I listened to you. So, any dirty playing was your fault.” _

_ “Oh, you whispered ideas to me, don’t act like I did everything Winter.”  _

“Natasha, what’s going on?” Steve asked.

“He remembers when he shot me. Now the Russian thing is causing some flashbacks, I’m talking him through them, he’s okay Steve.” Her voice was calm.

_ “I shot you?” _

_ “A few years ago, don’t worry though, no hard feelings. I just figured you’d like to tell Steve about this on your own terms.” _

_ “You mean instead of being thrown into flashbacks because your shorts showed off your ass?” _

Natasha smirked at him. The eye contact between the two still hadn’t dropped.  _ “Sorry about that. It’s hot out and I was going to go to a cafe with Wanda later. I never imagined that your dirty mind would finally catch on.” _

He thought of her in heat. The way her sweat had dripped off her those days and nights. His had too. They’d been so close, only willing to move to find some sort of release some sort of comfort. They pushed themselves through the heat because they weren’t sure if they would be punished for stopping. They didn’t want to find out if they were supposed to be having sex because they wanted it to be the one thing they chose. The heat hadn’t mattered. The heat had made him think of Steve’s apartment. 

_ “Notebook.”  _ He hissed. “Steve,  _ Notebook.” _

“What?” Steve asked, “Natasha is he okay?”

“He’s fine. Get his notebook.”

Bucky barely noticed as Steve left the room. Memories of a hot summer apartment flooded back again. The sweat between him and Steve as they laid close to each other sharing in grief of his mother melted with the sweat of Black Widow’s chest on his. Bucky shivered as the memories hit him in a disgruntled unison.

_ “Damn Widow, you really did a num-” _

_ “Do not call me that.”  _ Her words carried more force than he was ready for. His eyes regained focus that had been lost.  _ “I’m not her. You can use the English words but not in Russian. I’m better than her now.” _

Bucky nodded,  _ “Sorry.” _

Steve came in with Bucky’s notebook. Bucky finally took a good look at his friend and saw that Steve was terrified. 

“I’m okay Steve, I just, I just,” Bucky tried to reassure him but didn’t quite know how. “It’s just a lot right now.”

Steve still looked worried, but the terror lost its edge as he passed Bucky the notebook. Bucky grabbed it quickly, as well as the pen that Steve was good for bringing, and began scribbling down everything he knew about that day in the apartment. Every memory they talked about that day, everything Steve had sobbed about. He wrote about how close they’d been even though their apartment was decades away from having air conditioning. He wrote about all the plans that they’d had to cancel because Steve’s mom had died. Sarah had been the only person to know exactly how close the boys were, and she had died. Double dates were ruined for a few weeks.

“You were a lot smaller weren’t you.” Bucky muttered as he remembered the way Steve’s toes had felt cold against his shins. “You used to fit in my arms.”

Steve didn’t respond which meant Bucky was right. Steve didn’t like these memories any more than he did, so they didn’t really talk about them unless Bucky was wrong.

“How did you get to me Buck? I thought it was the Russian?” Steve’s voice was soft, but Bucky could hear how concerned he was. Bucky also had no idea how long he’d been writing.

_ “Are you talking about his height or his member?” _ Natasha joked.

Bucky took a break from writing to look up at her,  _ “Now why would I ever say something that dirty. You hurt me.”  _ He then turned to Steve and felt his emotion bleed back onto his face, “It’s complicated, can I ask if it’s real?”

Steve gave a small nod before glancing at Natasha. No one had ever been with them for this before. 

“After your mom died, we holed up in your apartment, didn’t we?” Bucky whispered.

“Yeah,” Steve nodded, “Yeah we were there for hours at a time, trying to figure out where to go next.”

“Where to go?”

Steve nodded again, “I’d still been living with her. She paid rent; you still didn’t have a job ‘cause we were only fourteen. You’d been hoping for one more year of freedom.”

The weight of the day gripped Bucky again as he scribbled Steve’s words down. He felt the terror of the time all over again. The fear of homelessness with Steve’s medical problems. The worry that Steve wouldn’t be able to smoke, and the agitation would get to him.

“You smoked?” He looked back up from the paper.

Steve’s laugh was forced. “I did, they said it would help my asthma.”

Natasha let out a laugh this time. “Don’t you do some PSA thing now where you tell kids not t-”

“If the public knew about half the medical practices in the forties, they’d have a hay day. You smoked too Bucky, the two of us went through a pack the day mom died, and I’m pretty sure you had a few more that night after I fell asleep.”

“Probably,” Bucky muttered as he wrote it all down.  _ “No one at Hydra really smoked, did they?” _

_ “Your handlers did. Mine did not. Yours smoked cigars, expensive ones.” _

Bucky nodded,  _ “Sounds like them.” _

Bucky looked back at his writing and quickly made note of a few more things. He didn’t want to write about her yet. He couldn’t think of the right words to describe the self-loathing that came whenever he thought of what they did together. Tony had jokingly mentioned updating him on modern swear words, but Bucky thought it might be worth the humiliation of the lesson to get new words to describe the ‘shitstorm’ that he had gone through.

“Howdy” Tony called into the room oblivious at first to the tension that sat in the air.

“Tony can you keep everyone out of the kitchen for a bit,” Natasha’s voice wore an authority that Bucky recognized. The accent was the only difference.

Bucky looked up at Tony to see a slight twitch of his eye as he faked his rolling confidence. “Sure thing, any reason you want me to give?”

Bucky answered before anyone else could. “No need,” he finally picked his bread off the floor and placed it on the counter. “I’m gonna head back to my room, I’ve got a lot to write. No sense in holding the whole place up.  _ I’m going to talk to you later. _ ”

He walked out quickly, aware of Steve close behind as he left Natasha to clean up the mess he’d left with Tony. Bucky closed the door before Steve could get in the room. He nearly stumbled to his desk where he began writing more frantically. Alone the memories didn’t hide themselves as much. Alone took over his brain and threw him through time like a rubber ball getting thrown repeatedly at a window.

Three days later one of Steve’s ‘Mandatory Team Bonding’ events came up. Bucky should have known it was coming. They had game night every Thursday. He’d slept worse than normal since recognizing Natasha. He knew he needed to write out what had happened, but he couldn’t bring himself to talk about her like that. He hated how objectified the two became in those moments. How much of their identity’s hydra had stripped away for them to be able to act that way?

“Never have I ever.” Tony cut through Bucky’s thoughts. They were on the couch in the living room. “Did they have that one in the forties boys? You know how to play?”

“You taught me how a few months ago, Bucky can catch on.” Steve answered.

“That’s right!” Rhodey laughed, “Tony got mad because he couldn’t find a way to get you to lose.”

“No, he did find a way.” Clint said, “You just mention anything from the forties and you’re fine.”

“Careful with that now though,” Natasha said, “Bucky’s here and we can’t make him lose his first game.”

“You never got me to lose.” Steve said, “You came close then it turned out that Banner had eaten more boiled food than we thought when he was in Argentina so there was a tie.”

Banner let out a short laugh, “Let’s not get back into that though.”

“Alright today we make Cap lose all on his own okay.” Tony sat down and drinks were poured.

“We’re doing ten fingers, right?” Sam asked.

“Ten fingers, and a drink for everything you’ve done.” Tony said.

The game began innocent enough as Bucky learned the rules. Everyone debated whether Tony’s sesame street appearance counted as a ‘public service announcement.’ Steve’s old smoking habits came out when someone tried to target Tony, and Natasha kept losing points as there was little she hadn’t done. No one asked her for stories as much as they asked everyone else. 

“Alright I’ve got one I need to know.” Tony said with a smirk and an eye on Steve. “I targeted you last round and you said it’s not fair to target you twice in a row, but I’ve been meaning to figure this out for a while so here goes nothing. Never have I ever had sex with The Steve Rogers?” 

Several people rolled their eyes, but everyone watched as Bucky took a drink and put down his eighth finger. 

The room went a little nuts. Lots of people were laughing, Tony thought no one saw him slip Rhodey five dollars, and Natasha was smirking like she’d known for a while. Bucky suspected she did.

“America’s Golden boy!” Tony laughed. “God the press would go bananas. Can you imagine the number of congressmen whose jaws would hit the fucking floor?”

“Calm down Tony the news isn’t breaking any time soon.” Steve said.

“Why the hell not!”

“Peggy still doesn’t know.” The energy of the room dropped. “She’s not finding out on the news and she’s not always there enough to register the news even if I wanted to tell her.”

Bucky met Steve’s eyes with a sad smile. They had talked about this already. 

“My turn, right?” Bucky said, “I do a never have I ever now?” 

Tony thought for a moment before saying “Eleven words in a row. Good job Barnes.”

Bucky rolled his eyes before he continued the game. Keeping his sentences as short as possible just to rile Tony up.

They kept going. Tony called out Steve’s cryofreeze to get him down to eight fingers, and Vision helped him out by getting Steve, Sam and Natasha both down to nine fingers with a callout to their SHIELD Helicarrier fiasco.

“Doesn’t Bucky have to put a finger down for that one too?” Sam asked. “I’m pretty sure he was there, wasn’t that the whole point?”

“I did not help take down the Helicarriers.” Bucky stated.

“My bad Sam, I should’ve rephrased.” Vision smiled. 

“One more, my turn and I’m allowed to target Steve because my last question also got Barnes out, so it doesn’t count.” Tony was cocky. “I’ve got just the question. You all had me pinned for crude earlier. Fair assessment, but I was actually thinking ahead. I do that sometimes. Anyways, prepare to be wowed.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Never have I ever, had sex with one James Buchanan Barnes.”

Before the room could think Natasha downed her drink, visibly closed her hand, and stood up from the table. 

“Tied again, anyone want a drink refill?” She said.

Steve looked at Bucky his drink halfway to his mouth, “Really?” He asked.

Bucky gave a small nod, glaring at Natasha.  _ “That was incredibly unnecessary.” _

_ "I can't lie to these guys Winter, sorry _ "

"Wait," Steve was catching on. 

_ "Then you're going to have to explain because I've only got fragments." _

_ "Are you going to leave the room for that? Avoid another episode" _

_ "No, hearing it might help." _

"Either of you three want to let us in on the secret?" Rhodey asked.

"I'm not entirely sure I know what it is," Steve muttered looking between Natasha and Bucky.

"I was stationed in South Ukraine in the late nineties." Natasha started.

_ "Was it that long ago?"  _ Bucky tried not to let the terror of the time lost edge into his voice. It felt like about five years ago, the memories were so close. 

Natasha's concern wouldn't be seen by the untrained eye, " _ yes _ . The people who oversaw us allowed us to be together for periods of time and let me practice my seduction on him. You can make whatever conclusion you'd like from there."

"Nineties?" Bucky could feel Clint's glare, "How old were you Nat?"

Bucky looked up at her horrified. He hadn't visualized her right this whole time. That's why the recognition wasn't immediate. That’s why his dreams hadn’t quite seen her. She can't have even been sixteen. There was no way. 

"That's not important." She answered shortly.

"Like hell it is." Clint stressed, "He-"

"Knock it off now Clint." Steve said, "Neither of them were in control at that point."

"Steve she was a kid you can't seriously think that’s-"

"I’d been through much worse, much younger." Natasha kept her voice even but kept looking worriedly at Bucky. “We were together several times and then we didn’t see each other until he shot me while I was working for Shield. He didn’t recognize me until the other morning. No one is to blame him for anything that happened.”

They kept talking, arguing likely but Bucky couldn’t listen. He'd thought he'd been okay. Not necessarily good, but okay when they'd been together. He thought everything with her had been their escape that she'd been doing it with him. She had been a child. He had ruined her. 

_ "How old were you?" _

Bucky knew he’d interrupted someone, but he wasn't sure who. 

_ "Don't do that to yours-" _

_ "No. How old were you?" _

_ "Winter you weren't even my first you can't be mad at yourself for this. Blame them Winter." _

Bucky had been hearing this for months. Blame Hydra. Blame the handlers. Blame the brainwashing. He managed to do it on a few things. Tony's parents he'd finally been able to blame Hydra for. Things like Berlin and the Triskelion however still weighed on his shoulders. This was going to be damn near impossible to pin on Hydra.

_ "Winter I was trained to make you want to say yes. If you need someone tangible to blame, blame me, I made you do it  _ Bucky  _ you don't even like women." _

"How the hell did you know that?"

"Bucky," Steve's voice was calm.

Natasha wore a sad confidence. It was much different than the pride she showed on their nights together.  _ “You liked it in the ass far too much for a straight man Winter. I was trained to seduce you to learn how to get gay men in bed with a woman. You were used. You were my test. You were not at fault. The horror is all on my shoulders there because I manipulated you in more ways than you’ll ever be aware.” _

Bucky stared at her dumbstruck. 

“Buck’?” Steve made it a question this time. He was worried again.

_ “That somehow makes me feel better and worse at the same time.” _

_ “You didn’t rape a child Winter. If anything, I raped you, but really Hydra gave neither of us a choice. I’m sorry.” _

Bucky forced himself to nod with her. Steve had been trying to get him to blame Zemo for weeks. Natasha had gotten him to blame the red room in minutes. No wonder she’d been able to have her way with him. 

“I’m going to go to my room.” Bucky muttered, “I’ve got some shit to think about.” 

“You want company?” Steve asked as Bucky stood up.

Bucky shook his head, “I remember better alone.” He muttered. Only Steve would have heard it, maybe Spider-man if the kid were here. He heard Steve ask Natasha what he’d said as he left. He knew the man would ask her everything he could without being inappropriate or pushy. Tony would too, but Steve would be able to get farther. Steve’s concern and innocence were the one thing he’d seen manipulate Natasha since the nineties. 

Bucky entered his room and got to his notebook before the memories came back stronger than ever. He wrote everything he remembered about her. It was a long list, but he’d not been this confident in a memory in weeks. Steve wouldn’t read these pages. He’d read past ones, ones about him, but these memories wouldn’t leave the notebook. They stayed with his memories of Tony’s father and Bruce’s assignment. These memories affected people alive. Steve didn’t have those. It wasn’t fair to let him read them. 


End file.
